much kindness, that when the Indian returned home, he related to his countrymen all the obligations he had received from the Spaniards. Thus confidence was established, and the natives ran from all sides, bringing fruits and provisions, and always cotton, bartering even their gold earrings for glass beads, bits of broken crockery, and the most common and useless things.

The prince of the country, or, to use the title by which he was called by his subjects, the cacique, wished to see those extraordinarilydressed people with white skins, whose praises were so much sung by his people. Christopher received him on board, and lavished on him the greatest attentions; this cacique was called Guacanagari.

After, in his turn, having visited the cacique, who loaded him with presents, and contracted with him a lasting friendship, Christopher Columbus continued his route towards the east. On the 24th of December, at eleven o'clock at night, the 'Santa Maria' ran on the rocks which are at the entrance of the cape, and ran a hole into her bottom; Christopher Columbus and his crew were obliged to get on board the 'Nina,' and, with his two remaining vessels, he set sail, and coasted for some time along the southern side of the island, till they arrived at the peninsula of Samana, and the northern coast of St. Domingo.

On the 16th of January 1493, the fleet set sail again for Spain. She reached the port of Palos on the 15th of March of the same year, from which place Christopher Columbus had embarked seven months before, upon one of the most memorable enterprises ever undertaken by man.

He was received on his landing with the greatest and most universal enthusiasm; all the bells rang, the magistrates, followed by all the inhabitants, came down to the shore to receive him; no one seemed weary of looking at him, admiring him, and questioning him; his journey from Palos to the Spanish court was one continued triumph, crowds ran on all sides to see the man who had discovered a new world. At Barcelona, where he made a public entry, he was preceded by the whole town.

Making the Indians go in advance, whom he had brought with him, in their national costume, with baskets in their hands containing gold, jewels, and other rare things that he brought from India, Christopher proceeded in the midst of a dense crowd to the palace. Ferdinand and Isabella awaited him seated on their throne; but as soon as he appeared, they rose, and preventing Christopher from kneeling before them to present his gifts, they ordered him to sit in their presence.

I will not follow Christopher Columbus in the second voyage that he undertook, for which the king gave him a fleet of seventeen sail of the line, to form establishments in the countries he had just discovered. The relation of his adventure is curious and amusing enough to read in a larger book than this.

Envy attached itself to the steps of Columbus, as to every other great man; and if it had not been for his great piety, which enabled him to triumph over all obstacles, and to sustain all misfortunes, his fate would have been a bad one.

"You have made a very great discovery, truly," said one of his detractors; "finding out a thing which exists, is not such a very great miracle, I think."

Without making any answer, for Christopher was prudent in his words and moderate in his actions, he ordered one of his servants to bring him an egg, which he gave to this impudent person, and desired him to make it stand upright on the table.

"It is impossible," said the man, putting the egg first on one end and then on the other, and not being able to make it stand on either.

"Try," said Christopher, "it can be done."

The man defied him to do it.

Christopher took the egg, and, knocking hard enough on the table to crack the shell without breaking the egg, he showed his stupified friend the egg standing upright on the table.

You did not tell me I might break it," said the man, very much put out.

"Neither did I tell you not to break it," replied the great navigator. "I only desired you to make it stand on the table, which it has done. It is just the same with the discovery of the New World; it was not the New World that was to be invented, but the idea of discovering such a thing, and that I did."

Christopher Columbus died at Valladolid, of an attack of the gout, on the 20th of May 1506, aged sixty-five. He left two sons, Diego, who inherited his titles, and Ferdinand, who wrote the history of his life. F. M.

THE deputies of a great metropolis, in Germany, offered Marshal Turenne one hundred thousand crowns not to pass with his army through their city. "Gentlemen," he replied, "I cannot in conscience accept your money, as I had no intention to pass that way."

SKETCHES OF SIAM AND THE SIAMESE.-No. I.

SIAM is one of the most interesting of the Indo-Chinese nations. Our recent conquests and annexations have made us neighbours of the Siamese, and may, at some not distant period, bring us into hostile collision with them. During our first Burmese war (in 1825-26) there was a moment when the Siamese were on the point of joining the Burmese. By possessing ourselves of Pegu, Martaban, Mergui, and the rest of the Tenasserim provinces, we press upon Siam at several points, the line of demarcation being here a ridge of hills, and here a narrow river, across which our Sepoys can challenge, or converse with the Siamese guards or pickets. Many of our readers may have friends and relatives with our army in Pegu, or engaged in trade on the banks of the Irrawaddi river; but to all, the subject of Siam and its people may be, at this moment, particularly interesting. An abundance of information exists, but it is contained, for the most part, in rather voluminous works, of which some are scarce, and not a few written in foreign languages. The country which Europeans call Siam is called by the natives

Muang-Thai, or the "Kingdom of the Free." For shortness, the Siamese frequently designate their country by the single word Thai. Their ancient name was Sajam, or the "Brown Race;" and from Sajam proceeds our word Siam.

The first European nation to establish an intercourse with this remote country were the Portuguese, who, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, under the great Albuquerque, built up an empire in the east with limited means and as if by magic. Previously to the occupation of Malacca by the Portuguese (about the year 1511) the dominions of Siam extended over the whole of the great Malayan peninsula, as far as Singapore; but at subsequent periods, territory was lost on this side, so that, at present, the kingdom begins only at Tringalu, in four degrees north, whence it extends to twenty-two degrees north latitude, thus being about four hundred and fifty leagues in length. Its greatest breadth from east to west is about one hundred and fifty leagues, reaching from ninety-six degrees to one hundred and two degrees longitude.

This, at least, is the measurement given by the French missionary Bishop, Pallegoix, who has resided twenty-four years in Siam, and has, quite recently, published at Paris, a very valuable description of the country. But our English travellers and writers somewhat curtail these dimensions. According to the best of them, Mr. John Crawfurd, the Siamese empire extends from five degrees north, to about twenty-one degrees north; and its longitude may be estimated at from ninety-eight degrees to one hundred and six degrees; its length thus being one hundred and sixty leagues, and its breadth eighty leagues, or, say, in round numbers, the whole country ineasures one thousand by five hundred English miles. Whether we take its area, with Mr. Crawfurd, at two hundred thousand of our miles (square), or with Bishop Pallegoix, at considerably more, Siam, as far as regards size, must be ranked among the great empires of the extreme east.

The population bears no proportion to the size of the country. Neither Mr. Crawfurd nor Bishop Pallegoix can place it higher than six millions. Indeed, the first of these two writers seems to think that four millions would be nearer the mark. Vast tracts of country, once populous (to judge from the ruins or slight remnants of temples, pagodas, towns, and villages), are now wholly unpeopled except by monkeys and other wild animals. A Mohammedan prince of India, called by the early French writers the "King of Golconda," sent an ambassador to Siam about two hundred years ago. This officer landed at Mergui (now in our possession), and

travelled through the immense wilderness which lies between that place and Yuthia, then the capital of Siam. One of the Siamese ministers afterwards rallied him on the small extent of his master's dominions in comparison with those of the great king. The Indian ambassador replied, that it was true his master's dominions were smaller, but they were inhabited by men, whereas the territories of his Siamese majesty, were, for the most part, peopled by monkeys! "The checks to population," says Mr. Crawfurd," in a country of which the land is often fertile and always abundant, the communications generally easy, and the climate favourable, may be described at once to be comprised in barbarism and bad government."

The real Siamese, or Thai, do not form more than one-third of the entire population. The proper country of this race is the valley of the Me-nam, which, though not above sixty miles in breadth, is so long, that its area is calculated at twenty-two thousand square miles. Mixed with the Tahi, or grouped around them and dependent on their kings, are Chinese, Cochin-Chinese (more correctly called Anamese), Malays, Kambogians, Peguans, and the people of other tribes, or of distinct races. The Chinese, who, particularly of late years, have gone largely into emigration, in spite of the insane prohibition of their government, which would keep them at home to starve in an overpeopled country, form an important element in the population, being recently set down at one million five hundred thousand. If not the least vicious, they are certainly the most industrious and intelligent of all the people who dwell in Siam. The Malays, who are very fierce and turbulent, are reckoned at nearly one million; the Kambogians at five hundred thousand; and the Peguans at fifty thousand. At the commencement of our late war in Burmah, many families, more in dread of the Burmese army than of our forces, migrated with their cattle and a few simple household goods, from Pegu into Siam, where they appear yet to remain; as, from letters received from an English officer in the country, we find that the great want in our new annexation, is a want of people, and that many villages rather populous before the war, or in 1851, are now almost entirely deserted.

In the capital and principal seaports of Siam, there are about four thousand Christians of the Roman Church, chiefly the halfcaste, very degenerate descendants of the brave, energetic, old Portuguese; an adventurous, and most enterprising race, never to be named without wonder and respect, although their greatness in the "golden east" was of so brief a duration.